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ABOUTThe Client is the Asia-Pacific unit of a USA-based cloud computing company that provides CRM solutions to business and enterprise customers. Its main product line is its suite of on-demand, cloud-based CRM platform
available to users on a subscription basis. The Client also offers a number of other cloud-enabled tools for customer service and support as well as for sales team collaboration.

With its reputation as a key mover in the CRM software space, the Client regularly organizes a number of annual conferences and events aimed at customers, vendors, developers, IT professionals, and industry thought leaders throughout various locations around the world. These are typically high-profile events that generate attendance figures that average in the thousands, as well as receive considerable media coverage particularly from the tech press.

While many of the Client’s conferences fulfill both branding and PR objectives, there is also a more tangible marketing (and overall business) goal that underlies most of the company’s events: to attract more people into its far-reaching ecosystem.

Among the events lined up for 2017 are three sets of conferences scheduled for January, April, and July. All three events are set to take place in Hong Kong and Singapore, showcasing insights on Asian business innovation and customer experience.

The three events’ target audience consists primarily of decision-makers who deal with marketing technology in some way at small- to medium-sized Hong Kong- and Singapore-based companies. The target attendees mostly come from technology-intensive industries such as manufacturing, financial services, professional services, retail, and healthcare.

Although it already possesses considerable brand equity and can easily leverage its extensive network of connections in the region, the Client determined that it needed to outsource part of the event registration activities in order to meet two key objectives:

• to ensure that relevant attendees from the specified verticals are identified and targeted• to maximize registration and attendance rates through prompt outreach and follow-up

The Client chose Callbox after evaluating a list of event marketing companies, pointing out that Callbox’s substantial experience in the Hong Kong and Singapore markets was a clear differentiator.

Callbox’s Call-to-Invite package was a good fit to help the Client meet its event marketing objectives for a number of reasons.

• Since the Client wanted to ramp up registrations a month prior to each event, it allowed the Client to obtain immediate response from its target attendees and gain additional information to help improve preparations.• Call-to-invite campaigns provided a way to quickly and accurately qualify likely attendees based on the parameters set by the Client, especially given the tight timetables associated with the events.• This also enabled multiple outreach opportunities, such as follow-up and confirmation calls.

The call-to-invite campaigns included the following main activities:

• Callbox put together the list of target attendees to be contacted based on the Client’s specifications, as well as prepared the campaign’s call scripts. These were reviewed and approved by the Client.• Contacts who expressed interest to attend the event and completed the registration via the registration link were tagged as qualified
attendees (RSVP). These were forwarded to the Client’s team on a daily basis.• In addition to outbound phone-based qualification, Callbox also helped other interested prospects complete the registration process by
assisting them through the submission procedure. Agents also managed the information send-outs for prospects who want to first receive the invites.

Although it already possesses considerable brand equity and can easily leverage its extensive network of connections in the region, the Client determined that it needed to outsource part of the event registration activities in order to meet two key objectives:

• to ensure that relevant attendees from the specified verticals are identified and targeted• to maximize registration and attendance rates through prompt outreach and follow-up

The Client chose Callbox after evaluating a list of event marketing companies, pointing out that Callbox’s substantial experience in the Hong Kong and Singapore markets was a clear differentiator.

RESULTS

Callbox’s Call-to-Invite package was a good fit to help the Client meet its event marketing objectives for a number of reasons.Each of the three call-to-invite campaigns ran for 22 days and was aunched a month prior to the respective event. Hong Kong and Singapore prospects were simultaneously contacted in all three campaigns. The below table summarizes the results from each campaign:

Taken together, the three call-to-invite campaigns were able to produce a total of 353 confirmed RSVPs for the three sets of events. Using a benchmark conversion rate of 11% to 20% (based on industry averages), the Client can potentially generate between 39 to 71 new customers from attendees at the three events that registered via the call-to-invite campaigns.

The Client is a group of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Data Integration experts, providing consulting and implementation solutions to numerous enterprise clients in the areas of Data Architecture, Data Modelling and ETL. They also provide consulting services relating to Reporting, Development, Modularized Solutions and Change Management.

The Client required a software license to complete product development, Their product, being a tool developed for Informatica PowerCenter, required the Client to team up with informatica users to obtain substantial information about the facets of the product’s development and come up with best practices.

The challenge was to “gain stronger and larger presence in the global market”. In order to achieve this, the Client needed access to Informatica users to help earn credibility and to increase trials for the software.

The Callbox Solution

Callbox’s Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel Lead Generation Program was all set to drive success for the Client. At the initial campaign term and even in succeeding terms, Callbox rolled out a Customer Profiling program to make the most out of the Appointment Setting campaign.

Customer Profiling

Initial email copies were sent to email addresses via the Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool

to validate the activeness of the contacts. The said email copies contained CTAs like links to the Client’s website, query boxes and downloadable questionnaires. All actions taken by prospects and email replies were tracked in real time.

Appointment Setting

Replies and actions were monitored by the Callbox team and were set as follow-ups. in order to appropriately profile the contacts, the agent first verified information details followed by the required probing questions that focused on companies who are current Informatica Users for their code review tool and later on expanded to companies who also use ODI (Oracle Data Integrator) and IBM Data Stage code review tool.

The feedback from these users were properly noted and to in order to help the users carry out the best of the tools, the agent set for them appointments with the Client’s demo specialists to discuss with them some how to’s and DIY’s.

The Results

The initial term generated 35 appointments for web demo, the second term brought in 29 appointments and the third term rolled out 31 appointments, a total of 95 web demos.

Callbox bridged communication between the Client and its target market. The information that were dished out of the current Informatica users were substantial to the improvement of the tool and has earned them a higher credibility from their customers. On top of that, the three term-campaign that Callbox initially ran for them has allowed them to establish a larger and stronger presence in the global market.

As of the writing of this case study, the Client is still engaged with Callbox for yet another campaign term.

The Client prides itself with a 33-year experience in providing over 10,000 customers with low cost, simple and very effective payroll solutions. However, this market dominion was somewhat threatened when payroll system providers in New Zealand offered the same or similar packages on software functionalities like Auditing, Templates, Tracking Capabilities, Costing Statistics, Pay History, Contributions and Help Desk Support, which deflated the Client’s huge number of customer database by 20%.

The competitors were seen to be quite aggressive in generating more customers, so the Client decided to combat the move by undertaking feisty initiatives like outsourcing a lead generation company who would help them look for new customers and win back those they’ve lost.

The Callbox Solution

Callbox’s multi-channel marketing program was designed to help clients maximize the full potential of a well-profiled and managed database to get them in front of their target prospects with the right message, at the right time.

In the said campaign, the Client required the Callbox team to generate leads using two different approaches for lost customers and new targets. The generated leads were differentiated into two categories, and from which the Client customized their solution/offers:

Prospects (new targets) who agreed to speak with the Client’s representative to discuss about the product /solution and its benefits

Approach:

This type of target customers were sent initial email copies that contained FAQs about their pain points like Holiday Pays, Leave Rates calculations, etc. As soon as the prospect opened the email or took action like clicked the Client’s website or accessed any link in the email, which were tracked real-time by the Callbox team, the contact was then scheduled in the Callbox PIpeline to be called by the agent and set for an office, online demo or phone appointment with the Client’s specialists.

Lost customers who agreed to speak again with the Client’s specialists and were interested to know about new offers

Approach:

For winback customers, the initial email copies included cost- and time-saving offers from the Client such as systems upgrade at the same package cost, restructured payment schemes and a sample comparative script of how their old service would look like upon return. A day after the initial copies were sent out, whether or not the prospect had opened or taken any action on the email or not, the agent made follow-up calls to those targets and set them for office, online demo or phone appointments with the Client’s specialists.

In addition, the agent incorporated a customer profiling activity during follow-up calls which made the database more accurate by updating contact information like the decision maker’s name, company name and address, contact numbers, email addresses and social media accounts.

The Results

The Callbox team generated a total of 84 Leads: 11 Office and 35 Phone Appointments and 38 Online Demonstration Bookings which were all part of the 2,343 Positive Contacts that included warm follow-ups. Out of the 84 Leads, 38 (40%) were winback customers.

Callbox’s multi-channel marketing platform was effectively utilized for the payroll leader’s lead generation campaign and which realized their goals to win back lost customers and acquire new ones worth nurturing.

The Client is a Marketing Consulting Agency which was founded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2002. The company is an event specialist mainly for IT and Software industries providing Signature Campaigns, Event Management, Retail Services, Partner Programmes and Content Development in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and had ran several successful events for IT giants like Intel and Microsoft.

As the Client’s reputation grew in 2007, more industry giants like Bosch, Castrol, DiGi and Disney Channel entrusted them to handle major events which brought them more acclaim in the region.

The Challenge

The Client’s successes in the past did not leave them overconfident and content with their achievements but rather drove them to set their sights higher with plans for expansion of their services in the Southeast Asia by providing service to multinational IT and software companies. This objective was crystal clear but the tools and processes to run the project remained a gray area. This led the Client to look for a third party provider who possesses the expertise that would help them realize their plans. They considered partnering with a telemarketing company – specifically someone who has rich experience in events marketing campaigns and can provide a large and well profiled database for them.

Callbox was among three providers that were shortlisted by the Client but stood out to be their best choice in the end. Find out the reason why.

The Solution

The Client planned out a trade event for a giant IT firm. The objective was to gather as many attendees as possible and get interested prospects who would be good targets to follow up for succeeding events.

Callbox, known for its thought technology as a top lead generation provider, designed a multi-channel marketing campaign for the Client and employed the use of the Callbox Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool, a marketing automation tool that streamlines actions and communication between the Client and the targets, creating a seamless workflow for the Callbox team throughout the duration of the campaign.

The presentation of the whole idea of how the project will be ran was the very reason why the Client blithely chose Callbox over the other two lead generation providers.

The process was easy as counting 1-2-3:

Event invitation emails were sent to prospects before the calling commenced. This was coursed through the Callbox Pipeline Lead Nurture tool which served a double purpose – to formally invite prospects and at the same time to validate the information details of the contacts in the list. The validation process filtered invalid contacts like DNC and Bounced emails by moving these entries from the target list to a repository list. Once updated, these were uploaded back to the target list to be blasted with email invites.

A one call resolution tactic was applied in making follow-up calls to prospects who took actions like opened email, replied or clicked a link on the page upon receipt of the invites. The agent’s follow-up call was not simply to share more about the event details or answer the prospect’s queries but as much as possible, aimed to seize the lead by walking them through the whole registration process. Once done, the agent immediately sent out a calendar invite that contained complete event details like title, date and time, venue and confirmation codes as a steady reminder for the prospect.

The third and last step was calling all the registrants a day or two before the event date to confirm their attendance. During the confirmation call, the agent had to make sure that the registrant had accepted or accepts the calendar invite and confirms his or his representative’s attendance to the event.

The Benefits

The campaign officially registered 129 confirmed attendees for the giant IT company. But for this Marketing Consulting specialist, the successfully concluded campaign was just a start of even bigger things, for them the best thing was nurturing 150 warm follow-ups who are all possible attendees to upcoming events, and a rich database containing well-profiled and accurate contacts.

The event campaign saved the Client much time and money as they not only gathered a good number of attendees for the IT giant’s event but at the same time, currently reserves another batch of warm prospects for the next event that wouldn’t necessarily require much time and effort to follow-up.
In fact, as of press time, Callbox is set to launch another event campaign for the Client.

Established in 1998, the Client is an Australian-owned cloud, data centre and connectivity provider. Specializing in enterprise cloud, robust data centres, managed connectivity solutions and multi-provider internet services, the Client’s network extends throughout Australia with its own points of presence in five states.

The Challenge

In 1999, the Client partnered with Optus to wholesale Internet Protocol (IP) Services to middle-tier ISPs and voice service providers in Queensland, and extended its market to Sydney in 2006. The Sydney operation did quite well in the first five years, maintaining a good number of customers.

However, the following years saw the Sydney operation fall into a predicament. Annual ROIs barely moved up as in-house sales and marketing schemes became ineffective in acquiring new customers. The Client knew that in order to increase their clientele list, more advanced sales and marketing methods and tools were needed. But such requirement further led them to another challenge: they were not equipped with the best tactics and tools that would scale up the sales numbers.

After some foresightful study, the Client took a backseat from the situation and decided to outsource their sales and marketing efforts with Callbox.

The Solution

Callbox and the Client were a match made in heaven.

The first project was a single seat, 3-month appointment setting campaign that ran in a very modest, but effective way.

The database, containing specific zip codes from the Sydney area, was kept accurate by both Callbox and the Client by regularly washing and profiling the contacts. The process saved much quality time to reach more decision makers with each call.

Along with the managed database, the Client worked closely with the agent by providing insights on how to carry out substantial pitches about the product’s benefits through promotions and great deals, while allowing the agent to keep her fundamental appointment setting skills, resulting to quality leads.

Moreover, the Callbox Pipeline marketing automation features like lead management, campaign monitoring and lead nurturing brought so much confidence to the Client. This dependable platform served as the sole reference for them to monitor prospecting calls, follow-up emails, and booked appointments, thereby, for most of the time, not requiring any further verbal discussion on campaign status and plans of action at all. As per the client, “it’s a neat diary“.

The Benefits

Through the Callbox multi-channel marketing program and the Callbox Pipeline, the team booked 24 appointments in the first two months of the the three-month campaign period – good news not only to the company’s directors but most especially to giant partner Optus. The said number of appointments represented a significant 62% surge from their average leads percentage in the last three years.

But the best was yet to come…

On the 3rd month, things got off to a flying start as sale after sale came in.

September 4, 2014

“Hi Team, FYI, we are about to get our first large deal signed off. Thank you and
your team for the fantastic result. Keep them coming!”

September 17, 2014

“Hi Team, I hope all is well. Some more good news, I have converted another lead
this week. Please pass on my thanks to the team & keep up the good work!”

January 21, 2015

“Team, What a great way to start the New Year! Thank you very much.”

Callbox’s multi-channel marketing program and the Callbox Pipeline were just exactly the perfect pairing of strategy and tool that the Client needed to achieve 33% sales increase in 6 months time. After two campaign periods that closed 3 large multinational deals, its web design sister company, signed up for a lead generation campaign with Callbox.

As per the Client, the achievement seeded their trust and confidence in Callbox, urging them to refer a friend company to sign up for an appointment setting campaign in 2015. Interestingly, the referred peer is also an Optus partner like them, who said that the Client wished them to experience the same success they had with Callbox.

Target Contacts: Directors, Business Owners, IT Managers, Person in Charge of IT

The target criteria have remained the same since the campaign started running until the last month.

Campaign Type : Lead Generation

Summary

The campaign’s initial run in April 2011 mainly focused on the Singapore market. The client preferred to cater to companies that send out big files. These are companies that have worldwide presence and do site-to-site file sending, or those that require file-sharing with their resellers or customers.

The initial campaign production delivered 19 leads. Such number was instrumental to the client’s positive decision to renew for another campaign that was even more impressive with 34 leads. Since then, the team continuously worked on for the lead generation campaign. The number of leads fluctuated but nevertheless quality was maintained at its best. The following campaign period brought in 28 leads with positive contacts at 63%, the next with 26 leads at 50% positive contacts, followed by another month with 35 leads at 71% positive contacts, and proceeded to another renewal month with 14 leads at 71% positive contacts and the last month with 23 leads at 76% positive contacts.

As the Singapore database was close to being exhausted, Callbox proposed to the client to divert its focus to other countries. In 2012, Malaysia came into the picture and kicked off with 30 leads in the 1st run, and went on alternately running MY and SG markets for the rest of the campaign period, with 18-20 leads per month, renewing contract after contract of 3 or 6 months, until the final leg in May 2015.

Challenges Encountered

Quality vs. Quantity

The campaign required the Callbox team more effort compared with the other campaigns. The leads that were passed were strictly qualified based on the set criteria, which were subjected to the client’s scrutiny and approval.

Database Use

The 4-year run made the most of its target database of contacts. Towards the end of the last 2 months of the campaign, both the Malaysia and Singapore databases went all in, as both target markets have been saturated, yet the campaign was still able to produce 18 leads at the least.

What A Difference It Has Made

This is one of the most successful and longest running campaigns in Callbox. But how was this huge success achieved?

The client truthfully engaged himself with the campaign by sharing fullproduct knowledge with the team by conducting a thorough trainingon the product specifications, features and usage benefits.

The Callbox team had a first-hand experience of the product as they were able to practically navigate its interface which helped the calling agent efficiently position the offer to the prospects. These best practices also made the leaders effectively coach the caller on the challenges encountered in the calls, making them able to easily address issues that arise from day to day calling.

All available resources in Callbox were utilized.

Calling, sending of emails and other marketing resources like the social media were substantial to the exceptional results of the campaign.
Definitely, this campaign has made history with Callbox.

Callbox Multi-touch Multi-Channel Approach:

Turning Targets to Sales-Ready Leads With a 50% Shorter Lead Nurturing Cycle

A Callbox Multi-touch Multi-channel Campaign is essentially a Comprehensive Marketing Funnel designed to unearth opportunities from an initial list of prospects compiled from basic target demographics, and deliver them to a client as qualified, pitch-ready, warmed-up sales leads.

The Callbox method combines the efficacy of highly-personalized traditional marketing communication with the intelligent efficiency of automation. In our years of experience, we have found that touches via phone and email remain to be most effective at establishing connections in the B2B world. Data from various campaigns also clearly suggests the importance of timing. Our findings on optimizing triggers and actions form the basis of our Callbox Pipeline’s design. In its latest incarnation, the Callbox Pipeline provides clients with a flexible, user-friendly platform for Lead Nurturing.

This case study traces the success of a B2B client from effective utilization of Callbox’s Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing technology.

Client Profile

The client was the North America marketing manager for a software company specializing in SAP enterprise software solutions and business intelligence. The company is also an SAP consultancy with expertise in areas of SAP Implementation, Process Upgrade and Data Management. The company has roots in Canada and wanted to expand into the US market.

The client was introduced to Callbox by an IT solutions business through the Callbox Referral Program. The California-based referrer company has been running a campaign targeting businesses nationwide with Callbox since January 2015.

The client had worked with two other vendors for telemarketing services and three email service providers in the past. While these vendors were able to deliver basic calling and mass email services, the client needed a more efficient and comprehensive solution that could work seamlessly across both channels. Working with separate vendors for each channel left the client’s sales team the burden of coordinating campaign activities on different platforms, setting up each component of the campaigns themselves and much time spent on prequalification of leads generated.

Callbox’s proposal for full service multi-touch multi-channel lead generation was found to be a more costefficient and all-inclusive alternative compared to contracting separate marketing services independently. The promise of a campaign greater than the sum of its parts and time savings on the client’s part allowing them to focus on sales efforts were part of the reasons behind the client’s decision to partner with Callbox.

The Target Market

The company wished to increase its market presence in California, New York and Texas. While the company has had customers from a wide range of industries, the client wanted to focus the campaign on the Manufacturing sector.

Companies with annual sales of $1M to $500M and with 10 to 2000 employees were included in the database.

C-Level executives, Directors and Managers in charge of the business’ enterprise software solution were the target decision makers.

Around 1500 records for each of the three states were mined from the Callbox Data Warehouse based on these parameters.

Campaign Objectives

Gather information on the prospect’s setup and plans concerning their company’s enterprise software

Arrange for a face-to-face or phone meeting with one of the client’s team of SAP Consultants

Send out an EDM (electronic direct mail) with a link to a video showcasing the client company’s latest suite of enterprise software solutions

Obtain a fully-profiled contact list for upcoming marketing efforts

Marketing funnel

A Callbox appointment is created when a prospect goes through the five stages of the marketing funnel (see Fig. 1). Our Lead Nurturing methods are designed to move as many prospects from one stage to the next, and allowed the client to obtain the most possible number of meetings.

Contacts

The Callbox Data Warehouse is comprised of over 50 million business records in over 7 countries. With the aid of our Data Specialist and our data mining tools, the client was able to zero in on the portion of this data pool that matched their market criteria.

Conversations

To begin converting inert contacts into leads, Callbox initiated a Conversation – an exchange over phone or email with a decision maker. Multiple contact attempts and pre-conversations with non-decision makers (gatekeepers, recommenders and evaluators) were often needed in order gather information on and establish contact with a decision maker. In the conversation stage, the decision maker was given a presentation of client’s offer.

Inquiries

Positive responses to a presentation were classified as inquiries. Inquiries often involved an initial request for information (brochure). Some cases required Callbox to make follow up calls and/or emails to confirm interest and check if the lead is ready to move to the next stage.

Qualified Leads

Whenever a decision maker makes a contact request to get a full presentation and/or formal proposal from the client, the lead is said to have graduated to this stage. In cases when the prospect had an immediate need and very high level of interest, the leads were converted directly into Qualified Leads from the Conversation stage.

Booked Appointments

In this stage, final preparations were made prior to endorsing the lead to the client. As required by the client’s qualifying criteria, screening questions were asked according to the approved call script. The prospect was also booked for a face-to-face or phone appointment with the client’s representative.

Email copies were formulated to have attention-grabbing subject lines, brief but precise body text and compelling calls to action in order to generate the most opens and replies. A total of 15,000 initial and follow-up emails were sent via Callbox’s email system — fully equipped with open and click tracking, and KPI reporting. The campaign’s Lead Nurturing schemes relied mostly on Callbox Pipeline’s programmable email marketing triggers.

Calling

Outbound calls facilitated by Callbox’s Dialer System ensured that more than 200 live calls were made 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Callbox Pipeline also allowed the calling agent to efficiently leave pre-recorded voicemail messages.

Web Visits

A landing page was created to complement the campaign’s outbound efforts via email and calling. Designed with professional and marketing aesthetics in mind, it featured the client’s brand and highlighted the main features of the client’s software. The landing page was also equipped with a web form to allow prospects to send in a contact request.

Social Media

Callbox Pipeline’s integrated Linkedin features allowed the Callbox team to find matching Linkedin profiles for each prospect in the contact list. Linkedin connection requests were sent to as many contacts as possible with an accompanying introduction text. Client also opted to have Callbox send out messages to all connections made as another possible avenue to generate leads.

Postal Mail and SMS

The client was one of the first to take advantage of Callbox’s supplementary snail mail and SMS capabilities. For this campaign, these channels were used to deliver promotional postcards to the prospects’ business address and send out mobile appointment reminders.

Nurturing Leads The Callbox Way

Lead Nurturing was the key to this campaign’s efficiency and success. The client was able to take full advantage of the Callbox Pipeline’s dragand-drop Lead Nurturing suite and the Callbox team’s knowledge of multi-channel lead generation best practices

Callbox Pipeline’s tools for Lead Nurturing allowed the Callbox team to maximize the campaign hours and reserve manual effort for more critical tasks (eg. presenting to decision makers, customized email response handling) and left most of the repetitive and time-sensitive legwork to automation.

I. Online lead Nurturing Scheme

An Introduction email was sent out to all email contacts in the prospect’s list (See Fig. 3). Three follow up emails spaced five days apart were programmed to be sent out to contacts who had no opens recorded, allowing multiple opportunities to convert contacts into opens.

Emails were mostly set to send out between 8:00AM to 10:00AM local time, as these were determined to be the optimal hours for email blasts based on Callbox analytics. Latter follow-up copies were set to send out at 4:00PM- 6:00PM to increase the chances of generating opens if the first attempts were unsuccessful.

Contacts who opened the email and visited the landing page were added to a Priority Call List for further nurturing by phone.

Email responses and inquiries from the landing page are logged into the Callbox Pipeline and inquiries not converted into booked appointments after three days were lined up for a round of follow-up emails.

By the end of the Online Lead Nurturing Cycle, all contacts with no opens recorded were also collected into another Call List, to which the Call Lead Nurturing Scheme was applied.

Supplementary Flowchart:Appendix A – Online Lead Nurturing Scheme

Web Inquiries

Prospects were led to the landing page primarily via email sendouts. Each contact request sent in by a prospect was received by the Callbox team as an email notification and treated as in inquiry.

II. Call Lead Nurturing Scheme

Automated actions under the Call Lead Nurturing Scheme (See Fig. 4) were determined by the Call Result Tag applied to the contact after each call attempt. Callbox Pipeline was programmed to send out different email copies if the call resulted in (a) no contact with a decision maker, (b) a decision maker requesting for a follow up or a (c) non-interested decision maker. Email brochures and meeting reminders were sent out automatically to all booked appointments.

Supplementary Flowchart:Appendix B – Call Lead Nurturing Scheme

Campaign Results

Production and other KPIs

By the end of the campaign term, the client was averaging 12 face to face meetings and 23 phone appointments per week. The client’s sales team was able to move 82% of all appointments into proposal stage and garnered 2 closed deals within the first two weeks, generating a three-fold return from their initial investment in the Callbox campaign.

Of the 15,719 emails delivered, 2247 opens (14.3%) and 193 click-throughs (1.2%) were recorded. 218 inquiries were generated out of 943 total replies received. Email marketing contributed to roughly 38% of all appointments generated while meetings from contact form inquiries comprised another 9%.

“Both my marketing team and sales team are very happy. Marketing sits back and only has to monitor because they have done their job on the setup and almost everything is automated; while my salesforce are very busy fulfilling booked appointments.” says the Client’s CEO

Below is the number of Targets on each stage of the Marketing Funnel after only 12 weeks in the Callbox Multi-touch Multi-channel Lead Nurturing Campaign.

With the Client’s previous telemarketing and email marketing service providers, the Client was able to convert 2% of raw targets into booked appointments only after running the campaigns for about 6.5 months or 26 weeks. Callbox cut this time into half, and significantly moved more targets into the later stages of the marketing cycle. This was enough to convince the Client to expand the number of campaigns they are running with Callbox.

The Client is a professional business software consulting firm based in Irvine, CA. They specialize in the Sage Software family of products – Sage MAS 90 and 200, Sage BusinessWorks, Sage CRM, and JobOps Job management software. The Client helps businesses increase productivity and profitability through the application of integrated accounting, distribution and management software. Their reporting tools allow users to quickly and easily extract, analyze and professionally present business information.

The Client’s services include software selection, system design and implementation, user training and support, data conversion, and eCommerce/EDI/CRM consulting. With the goal of being the most trusted and most responsive in the network technology and business management industry, they have helped over 400 companies in a wide variety of industries. The Client engaged the services of Callbox in August 2005

The Challenge

Considering the stiff competition and difficulty of marketing business software, it was crucial for the Client to double, even triple their sales and marketing efforts in order to find prospects. They lacked the team and resources to search for prospects. Sales and marketing was handled by one person who wanted to focus on presenting proposals and closing deals and could not be burdened by the time-consuming search for prospects. The Client needed to scour the market for businesses with upcoming software system projects such as software evaluation and upgrading. They targeted businesses that needed:

system change

system upgrade or downgrade

system maintenance

add-ons to current system

The Client sought a partner to find these prospects, generate interest for the products and services and provide all necessary marketing support to achieve their goal.

The Callbox Solution

The Client turned to Callbox to rev up their sales efforts.

Callbox initially carried out an invitational campaign in Aug. 2005, calling prospects and inviting them to attend meetings and/or seminars conducted by the Client. A series of lead generation and appointment setting campaigns followed, spread out over a year, alternately conducted on a per-lead or per-seat arrangement. Since the start of the campaign, the call quota of Callbox agents rose from 100 to 160 calls per day, targeting 20 leads per month as required by the Client.

Callbox agents inquired about prospects’ plans to change or replace their business management software in the next 3-12 months. This was followed by a series of questions regarding:

satisfaction with the current software being used

flaws/problems with current software

current systems used for operation and accounting

evidence of manual or double entry for processes

interest in changing or upgrading current software

functionalities expected from the software

time-frame for implementation

budget

Aside from calling prospects, the Callbox team sent out brochures to customers asking for additional information. Prospects that had talked with the Client’s sales consultant were also forwarded to Callbox agents for follow-up calls.

The Results

Since August 2005, Callbox agents placed a total of 27,857 calls for the Client, and have forwarded 240 leads since the start of the lead generation and appointment setting campaigns. With Callbox handling the qualification and forwarding of hot leads, the Client now devotes full attention to closing deals significantly increasing sales. They were pleased with the performance of the Callbox team who delivered a total of 72 leads from February to June 2007. Thereafter, the Client pre-extended their contract through to September 2007.

The Client specializes in empowering project workforce locally, and provides visibility globally. They make it possible to manage project workforce in real-time, eliminating the spreadsheets and custom-built applications enterprises use to fill the gaps caused by disconnected systems.

The Client’s on-demand software has earned an unqualified SAS 70 Type II certification ensuring maximum data security, reliability, and scalability for our hosted customers. Since 1995, the Client has served over 800 organizations around the world, including Caterpillar, Corning Cable Systems RD&E division, First National Bank, Hydro Quebec – DPE, Invensys Systems Canada, Major Drilling, Pioneer Natural Resources, State of Wyoming, The Pentagon, University of Michigan, Fisher Scientific, and Wyeth Biopharma.

The Challenge

With the volume of traffic the Client’s website gets every day, the Client needed to gather significant information from all its visitors in order to enhance its service offerings. It sought the services of a sales and marketing expert to handle all website inquiries and calls on their behalf and more importantly, qualify visitors and identify their needs so that its sales team can focus more on closing deals.

The Callbox team handled all service inquiries in the Client’s website. Callbox agents profiled the Client’s visitors by asking them their role in the company they represent, what industry they belonged to, the motivation behind visiting the website and gathering their contact information. The more crucial process was finding out what service they were interested in and what their requirements were. The qualifying process included questions on:

Budget

Current processes and software solutions

Number of Users

Target implementation date

Industry

While discussing these criteria and requirements, each Callbox Lead Manager types notes directly into Thunderchild using the template of the question and determines which among his or her list should be given a follow up call.

Once a lead is set to qualified, the Callbox sales team will then take over. An appropriate sales representative is assigned to a particular set of prospects based on their geographic location as well as the size and scope of the implementation. The sales representative then calls these prospects for a more thorough discussion about their business requirements in preparation for an eventual product demonstration.

Owing to the Callbox team’s excellent communication skills, consistency and efficiency in the conduct of the Lead Qualification campaign, the Client has been getting a steady flow of qualified appointments. Its sales team is now devoting full attention to closing deals, significantly increasing sales.

Customer Successes

The Client is a worldwide talent management leader with experience serving organizations of all sizes. The Client configures talent solutions for specific business needs to dramatically improve business performance. They provide on demand talent management solutions to assess, acquire, develop, and align workforce.

The Client delivers a comprehensive suite of solutions for businesses of all sizes, matching all sources of talent – be they professional and hourly candidates, agency referrals, campus recruits, contingent workers, or existing employees to all positions, whether it is centralized, decentralized, or multinational. It maintains its headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area and a research and development facility in Quebec City, where the company employs approximately 300 people focused solely on talent management applications.

The Challenge

The Client needed to invite prospects to its 2007 World conference. Its desired attendees were composed of its current customer base and prospects from all over the US culled from their in-house database.

This global company needed a reliable partner to update and manage its lists and gather pertinent information such as names of decision makers, email addresses and phone numbers, company names, addresses and zip codes. Using the lists from their database, the Client needed to generate interest and drive attendance to their event.

The Callbox Solution

The Callbox team broke the challenge down into distinct implementation phases:
Database Cleanup, List Management and Call to Invite Campaign.

Database Cleanup
The Callbox team helped preserve the valuable information in the Client’s
global database which contained millions of key contacts. The team updated and enhanced their existing prospect and customer lists by:

reviewing, evaluating and studying the work that needs to be done for the Client’s lists;

updating addresses, name spellings, titles and email addresses;

removing or consolidating duplicates;

normalizing data formats;

adding key data fields

phone-verifying all contact and company information

List Management
With the team’s expert knowledge of the direct marketing business and trends in the List Industry, recommendations were given to the Client on how to best utilize their list. After studying the Client’s prospect list, target emails based on interest, demographics, or custom questions were prepared by the Callbox team and sent out using advanced software and systems. Responses and results were recorded, tracked and reported to the Client daily.

Call to Invite Campaign
After completing the list cleanup process and list management, Callbox agents went to work calling and qualifying potential attendees as a follow-up on all emails sent. All call activities were automatically logged in to PipelineCRM, Callbox’s customer contact and sales force management system where the Client can view, process or download reports of leads and/or appointments generated by Callbox agents. Personal contact and company information were collected from those who signified their intention to attend the conference, organized and forwarded to the Client to be included in their list of attendees. Highly-trained Callbox agents efficiently multi-tasked, making hundreds of calls daily, identifying potential attendees, providing conference information when requested by prospect and preparing reports for the Client.

The Results

With Callbox providing maximum support prior to their event, the Client was able to focus on preparing for the conference itself and exceeded its target number of attendees. Client was impressed with the Callbox team’s excellent prospecting skills and attention to detail in cleaning up and updating its lists that it renewed its contract several times.

With Callbox’s list management and efficient reporting, the Client was freed from purging, updating and mailing, as Callbox did everything for them. With enhanced database capabilities, they are exploring an even more extensive direct marketing aimed at solely building their email lists.

The Client’s goal is to provide the best software experience and a lower total cost of ownership for their customers. To meet customers’ long-term needs, they provide an evolutionary path to support continuing business and technology innovation.

The Challenge

The Client didn’t have the in-house expertise to run a lead generation and lead management campaign, nor did they have the database tools to support one. To achieve their objectives, they needed a partner to develop and execute a comprehensive lead generation, qualification and appointment-setting program to capture greater market share for their business software solutions. While the company had a dominant market share in the industry, it lacked the support for their sales people to handle leads and prospect profiling.

With the rapidly increasing number of individuals from various companies across all industries downloading information from the Client’s website, it was crucial for them to:

profile and qualify all individuals using their website;

strengthen their sales force capabilities in handling the profiling and qualification

Calls had to be made across the Asia Pacific Region to verify the records of individuals and companies that downloaded files from the Client’s website. Qualification was necessary, as the Client wanted to ensure that their website visitors/prospects could be considered warm leads before their sales team pursued them. Aside from verification and qualification, the Client also needed a support team to call and invite prospects and customers to various company-sponsored events throughout Asia.

The Callbox Solution

The Client teamed up with Callbox to carry out:

1. Lead Generation through outbound cold calling to generate leads and appointments for the Client’s sales force.

The Client’s target market consisted of decision makers who were looking for business-specific solutions to address their challenges and produce tangible results. Callbox’s sales force used cold calling to identify and qualify prospects for the Client. Qualifying questions determined:

Determine whether the prospects wanted to evaluate a new software solution.

Determine business pains and/or areas of interest to find a fit between prospects’ needs and Client’s solution offerings.

Identify the type of software prospects were using and for how long they’ve been using it.

Find out if prospects would be interested if presented with a new solution.

Callbox executed the cold-calling campaign using the list of target contacts provided by the Client. Agents who were assigned to this campaign used a customized spreadsheet to keep track of all call results. Calls were categorized as lead completed, not interested, competitor, invalid, duplicate, no action needed, etc., and were assigned to each respective column on the spreadsheet for easy reporting and evaluation. Leads generated from the calling campaign were posted on the PipelineCRM to be reviewed by the Client and feedbacks were discussed. Callbox provided daily and monthly reports on pipeline activity and campaign status.

2. Profiling and updating the client’s prospect data base with up-to-date business and contact information

The Client provided Callbox with their list of prospects and clients. The Callbox Team verified and updated all possible contact information by phone, including email addresses.

3. Call-to-Invite Campaigns

Callbox provided total sales and marketing support by carrying out several call-to-invite campaigns, inviting the Client’s customers and prospects to attend company-sponsored events in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The Callbox Team then followed up every call with an email. Aside from company-sponsored events, the Client also held webinars. Callbox callers invited guests to these webinars and also confirmed attendance for the Client.

4. Online, web-based reporting across all aspects of the project, its progress, and statistics which included lead distribution and appointments set.

The Callbox solution provided the Client with a steady, predictable flow of qualified sales opportunities as well as a systematic methodology for tracking every opportunity and evaluating sales force effectiveness.

The Client has a very accurate and predictable sales pipeline. By the time the prospect was ready to truly engage with them, they already had complete information about their prospects and their companies.

The Results

With the Callbox Team averaging 2000 calls monthly, verifying contact information of current customers, qualifying prospective clients, and setting appointments for the Client’s sales team, the Client experienced a significant increase in conversion rates.

Backed by Callbox’s own PipelineCRM, the Client enjoyed easy tracking and monitoring of all leads. The Client was also able to consistently improve service offerings through call recordings made available by Callbox.

Since then, the Client has been renewing on a month-to-month basis with new campaigns — lead generation, call-to-invite and profiling for different types of products. Pleased with the overall performance of Callbox, the Client provides sales training for the team, conducted at the start of every campaign. The smooth integration of sales and marketing with disciplined lead management resulted in increased sales and also provided total control over the customer acquisition process.

Customer Successes

The Client is the largest independent Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards consulting organization in Australia and New Zealand as well as the largest Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Microsoft SQL Server support organization in Australia and New Zealand.

The Client is a specialized technology consulting organization focused on building and supporting long-term relationships with enterprise and government customers.

The Client is an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner, the highest level of partnership with Oracle, only achieved by a few companies globally. They provide a complete service continuum of Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and SQL Server including: sales, planning, design, implementation, project management and support. Their offices are based in Australia and New Zealand and their support centre services a large diverse client-base located across five countries.

The Challenges

Increase sales and generate awareness about the benefits of the Client’s products and services

Callbox launched two campaigns â€“ Lead Generation through Telemarketing, and a Call-to-Invite Campaign.

Lead Generation Campaign
Callbox agents made calls to CIOs of companies from a list of prospects provided by the Client. Every call began with the introduction of the Client’s company, followed by an invitation to an introductory chat about the benefits of the Client’s support services with the Client’s Business Development Manager. Once a positive response was received, Callbox callers emailed information about the Client’s services and collected the prospect’s mobile number and preferred time of meeting. This information was entered into PipelineCRM, Callbox’s customer relationship management system, for the Client to review and follow-up.

Call-to-Invite Campaign
The Client had previously sent email invitations to a list of prospects for the Oracle Leadership Forum. The Callbox Team’s task was to:

Call those prospects and confirm receipt of the invite from the Client

Confirm attendance to the leadership forum

The Callbox callers collected contact information from prospects who signified their intention to attend the free leadership forum. They collected the attendees’ names, company names and email addresses for the Client’s registration files. Prospects who informed Callbox that they failed to receive invites to the event were sent invitations through email and received a confirmation call 48 hours later.

The Results

Both campaigns were executed quickly and immediately, giving the Client enough warm leads to follow-up right away, and a good number of attendees to their event.

The Client especially enjoyed working with the Callbox team, citing the team’s excellent communications skills and efficiency. The Client was also pleased with the convenience and flexibility of lead tracking and management with the use of Callbox’s PipelineCRM. Having received good quality leads following a successful company event, the Client plans to use Callbox’s services for future lead generation campaigns as well as promotional and invitational campaigns for company-sponsored events.

About Us

Founded in 2004, Callbox has evolved into a specialist provider of Multi-Touch Multi-Channel Marketing solutions for businesses and organizations worldwide. Its core competencies include Lead Generation, Appointment Setting, Lead Nurturing and Database Services, delivered through its proprietary marketing automation platform, the Callbox Pipeline.

Callbox enables companies gain a foothold in their priority markets by initiating conversations with decision makers through the efficient and intelligent use of targeted touchpoints over six channels: voice, email, social, chat, website and mobile.